Breath of the Wild becomes second best-selling Zelda title ever

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has displaced Ocarina of Time as the second best-selling title ever for the Nintendo franchise. Image: Compfight

It has been recently announced through Nintendo’s financial report that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has officially become the second best-selling Zelda game in the history of the series.

The game, which originally debuted on the Nintendo Switch, sold 6.7 million units on a global scale, with the later-released, Wii U version 1.08 million copies sold, giving Nintendo a grand total of 7.78 million units of sales of their most recent Zelda game.

This puts Breath of The Wild right behind Twilight Princess, Nintendo’s thirteenth installment in The Legend of Zelda series, which managed to sell 8.85 million copies. There are many predictions of the future dethronement of Twilight Princess and the possibility of the latest Zelda game becoming their leading market episode in the Zelda saga.

Since Twilight Princess was sold in three different platforms (GameCube, Wii and a Remastered Wii U version and each sale from each port counts, it is very likely that we will, later on, see Breath of The Wild released on at least one more platform, making the prospect of Breath of The Wild becoming the best-selling Zelda game all the more likely.

Breath of the Wild introduces a completely new way of playing Zelda

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, released on March 2017, introduced for the first time on any Zelda installment, an open world style of gaming, which is twelve times larger than Twilight Princess’ overworld. IGN called the latest Zelda launch “the open world Zelda we’ve always wanted.”

Developers also released two bundled DLC packs that received the names of The Masters Trial and The Champions’ Ballad.

Breath of The Wild was also deemed as Nintendo’s most technologically ambitious project in its entire history and the soon-to-be Nintendo classic is a must-have.

Critics have nothing but praise for Breath of the Wild

The game was met with praise and hype ever since the announcement and release of the official trailer. Once Breath of the Wild launched, it was critically acclaimed and with almost universally positive reviews from fans. It received several Game of the Year awards, and some critics calling it the best game ever.

Not only do fans get to revisit familiar characters, but they get to be free to explore as they please for the first time ever in a Zelda game, so they get to be more immersed into the story and they get to actually be Link as much as they want.

Ars Technica’s Orland Kyle praised the game widely, saying, “After spending a week utterly immersed in Nintendo’s open-world reimagining of the tried-and-true Zelda formula, it’s hard to return to the more formulaic entries of the franchise’s past.”